The Conference of local authorities which met in London this

week to discuss accidents due to traffic considered a great many recommendations but adopted not one of any importance. No doubt there were excellent reasons against making four-wheel brakes compulsory, against insisting that the public shall cross a street at certain places, against forbidding motor vehicles " to overtake " at the more important crossings, and so on. Still, the fact remains that the figures of street accidents have been soaring ominously. Although we fancy that some of the recommendations which have been rejected might have been of use, the pedestrian will himself have to play a more conscious part in ensuring his own safety. The old idea, perfectly just in its time, that the pedestrian had as good a right to the road as any vehicle cannot survive. If it did traffic would everywhere be permanently slowed down as a sacrifice to the dignified doctrine of extreme individual rights.